honey-tragedy

[honey-tragedy]

update everyone, steven universe rot is back in my brain

ft. me and my partners ocs

[honey-tragedy]

i think anyone who’s every used the internet has seen this picture at least once

[honey-tragedy]

"The Wandering Monk"

Part of a Fallout fan project I'm working on about a ghoul monk living in the once Chinese occupied country of Tibet.

The story focuses heavily on buddhism, and the influences it has on this part of Asia post-war.

This was all hand painted in procreate

[honey-tragedy]

You know it's gonna be a good fic when the title is just giving tommyinnit a random ass job or make him do some crazy ass task

"Tommyinnit,the greatest receptionist of all time"? Hell yeah

"Tommyinnit, rockstar"? fuck yes

"Tommyinnit discovers narnia"? Why are you even asking

"Tommyinnits infamous taxi service"? Do you need a answer

Bro why are they all bangers

[honey-tragedy]

NYbN Belated Meta: Isaac and Fuego (Season 1 Retrospective Spoilers)

Since watching the season 1 retrospective on ‘New York by Night’ on the Project Ghostlight patreon, two things have been spinning through my head like rotisserie chickens for the past while.  One of them is outright stated, one is far more implied, but I am gnawing on them, fascinated by them, desperately needing to write meta about them so I can get all my thoughts down.

Now, below the cut are two things I either learned or realized while watching the retrospective.  That means that there are spoilers for said retrospective.  If you’re a fan of NYbN and want to read this, I seriously urge you to go and sign up for the Patreon and watch the retrospective first!  I do not want to make people feel like the information below the cut is in any way a replacement for the massive amount of information you get from that.  It’s two things.  Essentially a taster for the feast that lies one Patreon subscription away.

Cool?  Cool.  Let’s get into this.

Okay, let’s start with what may be my favorite revelation from the retrospective, that makes such sense once you know it:

Isaac’s hoarde is people.

This is such a cool concept for a Tzimisce!  There are so many ways it can be fucked up, and so many ways it forces the player and the character to act as a team player far more than the Tzimisce might be wont to do otherwise.  It is simultaneously monstrous and an enormous weakness, and that is such a great way to set up a character.

It also recontextualizes so many of his actions once you realize this.  It not only plays into his position as running a protection racket and craving prey that need things from him, but his particular attachments to Michal and Angela make so much more sense.  They were real life colleagues and the closest things he had to friends, who then became the first people in his hoarde.  His fierce protectiveness of them also makes so much sense in this context, as people messing with Michael or Angela are people messing with what is HIS. 

Particularly after finding out that he’s more or less incapable of feeling most human emotions, I find it super fascinating that his Beast probably feels far more than Issac would on his own.  That possessiveness his Beast has is possibly the closest he’s ever felt to real love or friendship (all twisted by wanting to own the people his Beast decides to latch onto, adding a real layer of horror to all his relationships), which makes Isaac the inverse to a lot of Kindred: his Beast almost makes him more human, giving him more of a sense of human emotions and attachments than he might have ever had otherwise.

That puts him in a really unique position: he is particularly weak to social needs.  And nowhere is it more obvious than with his coterie.  The second they were all paired off by Richter, Isaac essentially looked at these three other vampires and decided that they were now part of his hoarde.  I once said Serif was the first of them to really embrace being a coterie, but she wasn’t.  Isaac was, just in far more subtle ways.  Despite Fuego having a car, he insists on having Michael drive the coterie as a group; he even has Michael get the minivan especially to accommodate his coterie.  He invites them to his house quite quickly.  Many Tzimisce never invite people to their houses, because they don’t want people touching their things or messing with them.  But of course Isaac invited them over: his hoarde needs to be in his house, so they each now have rooms he’s laid aside for them.  He logically knows that, as Kindred, he can’t just force them to stay with him (although he’d try it), so he needs them to want it.  He has to be an actual friend to them to get his hoarde to stick around. 

And that, interestingly, adds another layer to Rey’s betrayal in the finale.  Because not only is Isaac pissed that he almost sold them out to the Camarilla, but he is suddenly in danger of losing a part of his hoarde.  He may find Rey to be irritating almost constantly, but Rey is also his, and Rey wanting to leave them for the Camarilla?

Unacceptable.  Isaac immediately tries to convince Rey that the Camarilla would never take him, or even if they did, they’d never let him forget what he was.  And this isn’t even necessarily a lie.  Isaac is a master of using limited truths to get what he wants; he rarely outright lies, particularly to his coterie.  He simply deploys limited facts in the best configuration to get them to decide to play things his way.

And this is where we get to my second revelation, not outright stated, but more observed throughout the retrospective: Aabria and Alex made incredibly similar characters.  Isaac and Fuego are both both overtly and far more subtely manipulators.  They are both inherently social, both need people to function.  And they are both very territorial when it comes to getting and keeping the people they’ve chosen.

We’ve already talked about Isaac’s need for other people, but Fuego’s is all about how she was built.  Aabria explained that she was an exploration of soft power.  Aabria looked at how many people looked at the Ventrue as craving power and interpreted in a very patriarchal ‘I’m going to be the boss’ way, so she decided to explore ultra-femininity and subtle power.  She was a community organizer, bound to others and to the network of  a community since she was a child.  She gets her control through getting others to give her what she wants by convincing them it was their idea in the first place.  Fuego is built to be the power behind the throne, but that requires that another ass be seated in that chair.  So she needs people nearly as much as Isaac does, but because it’s less of a compulsion for her (leaving aside the revelations about Fuego and blood bonds, because THAT is a whole different discussion), she’s able to be more clear-headed about it. 

I loved learning how quickly Fuego clocked what Isaac was about and started feeding into it.  I took it for granted that Fuego’s lack of knowledge about Kindred society was genuine, but I now we know it at least in part was an act.  Certainly, she has genuine gaps in her understanding, but I she exaggerated her ignorance, because playing young and dumb is a great way to seem non-threatening, and to assess people around her without letting them know.

And knowing that, you can see her trying to figure Isaac out from the jump.  When he offers them a ride, despite her explicitly telling him she has a car, she immediately asks if she owes him something.  She phrases it like she doesn’t know what she’s talking about, but Fuego clearly knows about boons.  She’s trying to figure out if he’s boon-fishing by this car-ride, and she’s trying to figure out how honest he’ll be if he thinks no one has any knowledge but him.

And in that scene a few important things happen.  Isaac explains Boons without using the word, but at least gives them a broad—and more importantly accurate—portrayal of what would and wouldn’t incur a boon.  He also makes clear that this is just on his way.  It’s practical.

And that gives Fuego a lot to chew on.  Isaac is trustworthy, at least to an extent.  But if he’s not after boons, he has to be after something else.  And then he offers them rooms at his place (despite both Rey and Fuego actually having really nice places of their own).  And then he keeps offering them accurate information, but no more than they ask for.  He keeps trying to lure them to stick around.

And she’s got him clocked, at least sort of: he wants them to be around him.  And more specifically, he wants they themselves, rather than anything they have or could bring him.  She figures out Isaac wants to be the guy with the knowledge first, and keeps on with the ignorant-baby-Kindred act.  I’m not sure if she’s also realized his far more base need to have them around him as often as possible, but she has to suspect something like it.  Even by their first big argument, her punishment for Isaac being an asshole about her murdering a security guard is to choose to walk home, to choose to not only refuse a ride from him, but to absent herself from his presence.

I seriously hope that season 3 does someday happen, because I desperately want to see how Isaac and Fuego’s relationship evolves.  I want Isaac to finally lose his cool and try to dominate his ‘friends’ into not leaving him.  I want Fuego to finally drop the ignorant act and let him know exactly what she knows and how long she’s known it.  I want them to be forced to lay their cards on the table, to get into a situation where they finally see one another without the masks. 

It’s hard to say how that would work out. 

They could fall apart.  They’re both so poisonous.  Isaac’s need to keep the coterie around is so extreme it’s forever threatening to spill over into dangerous and toxic territory.  Fuego has to be secretly in control and gets furious when she either loses power or is forced to confront how low down the totem-pole she really is.  They could so easily be oil and water once they finally see one another as they truly are and understand the depths to which each would sink for what they want.

Or they could get closer.  The level of respect that they might be able to develop if they ever saw eye to eye could make them a terrifyingly adept duo.  If game finally recognized game, and they both understood how well they played the exact same field, they might be able to get over their differences and find ways to work around their mutual issues of pride and control to be a power to rival anything in the Bronx.

Hell, even a four-way mutual blood bond seems entirely possible with the mess of ugly co-dependency and family issues swimming around the Minivanarchs.  Isaac explicitly wanted everyone blood bonded to him, because that was a way to get them them to want to stay with him without ever having to force the issue.  Fuego has complicated addiction-flavored relationships with blood bonds, and has a need for community.  Rey might bind himself to everyone either to protect them or as a way to get them to accept him again, if he decided to go that route.  And Serif is made of endless family issues, craving a true connection not poisoned the way her connection to Argus and her mother is.  And if anyone could make Isaac blood bond himself to the group, it would be a fully-informed Fuego knowing how much he needed them all to stick together.

It could be glorious.  It could be terrible.  It would probably be the prettiest trainwreck of four needy assholes needing one another to death you’d ever seen.  And I hope that someday I get to see how it plays out.

[honey-tragedy]

2025 Bandcamp Friday Fiction Podcast Catalogue

Bandcamp Friday means artists on Bandcamp get more out of your purchases. Support your favourite fiction podcasters and get some crisp audio in the process.

Dates

(Starts at midnight, runs all day)

Friday, March 7th (UTC-08:00)

Friday, May 2nd (UTC-07:00)

Friday, August 1st (UTC-07:00)

Friday, September 5th (UTC-07:00)

Friday, October 3rd (UTC-07:00)

Friday, December 5th (UTC-08:00)

Fiction Podcasts

Anamnesis (Full Audio Drama + Soundtrack)

Awake (Full Show)

Camlann (Season 1)

The Dungeon Economic Model (The Complete Series)

Folxlore (Part 1 • Part 2)

Generation Crossing (Full Narrative Album)

Inn Between (Season 1 • Season 2 • Season 3)

Old Gods of Appalachia (Season 1 • Season 3)

Sidequesting (Season 1 • Season 2)

The Tower (Part I • Part II • Part III)

What Will Be Here

Podcast Specials

The Deca Tapes (Puzzle Box)

The Dungeon Economic Model (Halloween Special)

Leaving Corvat (TEMPLE OF SLEEP)

Welcome To Night Vale (Live Shows: Condos • The Debate • The Librarian • The Investigators • Ghost Stories • All Hail • A Spy in the Desert • The Haunting of Night Vale)

Where The Stars Fell (The Christmas Chronicle)

Podcast Music

The Adventure Zone

Aftershocks (Soundtrack)

Alice Isn't Dead (Music From)

All My Fantasy Children

Among The Stars and Bones (OST)

ars PARADOXICA (When I'm Not Here • Electric River (End Theme))

The Ballard of Anne & Mary (Soundtrack)

The Big Loop (OST: FML • The Fugue )

Camlann (Keep the Fires Burning: The Original Soundtrack)

The Deca Tapes (OST)

The Department of Variance of Somewhere, Ohio (OST: Season One • Season Two)

Dreamboy (Silent Night, Holy Night)

The Dungeon Economic Model (Royal Musical Accompaniment • Chill Beats to Build Profitable Dungeons To)

Eeler's Choice (OST)

The Fall of the House of Sunshine

Folxlore (Music To Dance With Your Inner Demons To)

Friends At The Table

Gospels of the Flood (Soundtrack)

Greater Boston (Soundtrack, Seasons 1-3)

The Grotto (Soundtrack)

Hello From The Hallowoods (Starcrossed Gods OST)

It Makes A Sound (Wim Farros: The Attic Tape)

Kane and Feels (OST: Volume 1 • Volume 2)

Lake Clarity (OST)

Leaving Corvat (Re-mastered soundtrack)

Liars & Leeches

The Lost Cat Podcast (Musical Features)

Malevolent

Midnight Radio (OST)

Mockery Manor (The Music Of: Season One • Season Two • Season Three • A Midwinter Night's Dream)

Neoscum

Nowhere, On Air

Old Gods of Appalachia (What is Sung Under The Mountain Vol. 1 • The Land Unknown (Theme) • The Bride • Familiar & Beloved)

Our Fair City

The Pasithea Powder (Theme • Mary Ann • Odysseus)

The Penumbra Podcast

The Polybius Conspiracy (OST)

Re: Dracula (Concept Album)

ROGUEMAKER (Soundtrack)

Rogue Runners (OST)

Skyjacks (Call of the Sky)

Station Blue (OST)

The Strange Case of Starship Iris

This Planet Needs a Name (Albums: The Nameless Songs - Landing - Growing - Shifting)

The Tower (Original Score: Part I • Part II • Part III)

Unplaced (Soundtrack)

Unseen (Soundtrack)

Where The Stars Fell

WOE.BEGONE

Wolf 359 (OST: Volume One • Volume Two • Volume Three)

Zero Hours

Additions encouraged.

[honey-tragedy]

[honey-tragedy]

nosferatu (2024) is so fucking funny. they did this joke twice

[honey-tragedy]

[honey-tragedy]

Tales From The Gas Station, Bedside Manor || Ghosts and Monsters

The video is complete! Happy watching yall!

[honey-tragedy]

Burying vs digging

[honey-tragedy]

doomed by the narrative no matter what

[honey-tragedy]

Finally listened to Epic The Musical :)

reference under read more!

[honey-tragedy]

💚👁️🕸️ In honour of The Magnus Protocol releasing today, here are some book recommendations based on The Magnus Archives Fears!! 🕸️👁️💚

Detailed list of books below the cut!

For more book recommendations, especially queer horror, check out my Bookstagram @hauntedstacks

The Buried ⚰️ - Into the Sublime by Kate A. Boorman - Stuck by Ben Young - The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling - The Deep by Nick Cutter

The Corruption 🦠 - What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher - Green Fuse Burning by Tiffany Morris - The Honeys by Ryan La Sala - She Is A Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran

The Dark 🌑 - Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes - Nightfall by Jake Halpern & Peter Kujawinski - No Power by Todd Kirby - The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey

The Desolation 🔥 - Firestarter by Stephen King - Burner by Robert Ford - Those Who Wish Me Dead by Michael Koryta - Burn the House Down by Kenna Jenkins

The End 💀 - Funeral Girl by Emma K. Ohland - Pet Sematary by Stephen King - Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune - This Thing Between Us by Gus Moreno

The Extinction 🦴 - Lost Signals by Max Booth III - Bride of the Tornado by James Kennedy - No Safety in Numbers by Dayna Lorentz - The Rules of the Road by C.B. Jones

The Eye 👁️ - Video Palace by Maynard Wills - Episode Thirteen by Craig DiLouie - A History of Fear by Luke Dumas - The Watchers by A.M. Shine

The Flesh 🦷 - You’ve Lost A Lot of Blood by Eric LaRocca - Carnivore by Justin Boote - A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G. Summers - Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica

The Hunt 🏹 - Hunt by Alexandra Nisneru - The Woods Are Always Watching by Stephanie Perkins - Survive the Night by Danielle Vega - The Hunger by Alma Katsu

The Lonely ☁️ - Red River Seven by A.J. Ryan - Solitude by Michael Penning - Dark Matter by Michelle Paver - We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

The Slaughter 🥩 - Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin - Your Shadow Half Remains by Sunny Moraine - American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis - The Summer I Died by Ryan C. Thomas

The Spiral 🌀 - That Darkened Doorstep by Catherine Jordan - Mind the Mirrors by Amanda Leanne - Grey Noise by Marcus Hawke - Last to Leave the Room by Caitlin Starling

The Stranger🕴️ - It Looks Like Us by Alison Ames - My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix - The Deep by Alma Katsu - The Outside by Stephen King

The Vast 🪂 - From Below by Darcy Coates - Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant - Floating Staircase by Ronald Mafi - Nightmare Sky by Red Lagoe

The Web 🕸️ - The Taking of Jake Livingston - The Fervor by Alma Katsu - The Book of Accidents by Chuck Wendig - Come Closer by Sarah Gran

If You Like The Magnus Archives 💚 - Thirteen Stories by Jonathan Sims - Family Business by Jonathan Sims - Gas Station by Jack Townsend - Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix

[honey-tragedy]

WE GOT ACCURATE LYRIC VIDEOS!!! IT'S HAPPENING!!!!!

yes it'll be the whole musical ALSO it contains stage directions and context!! this is revolutionary!

[honey-tragedy]

Oh,,,,👀

noah.... noah when i get u..... NOAH WHEN I GET U-

[honey-tragedy]

Messy as fuck woah????